System and methods to associate multimedia tags with user comments and generate user modifiable snippets around a tag time for efficient storage and sharing of tagged items

ABSTRACT

Example methods and apparatus to add a tagged snippet of multimedia content to a playlist are disclosed. An example apparatus comprises an automatic content recognition search service to search a fingerprint database to find a match between query fingerprints for a snippet of multimedia content captured from a multimedia program at a timestamp and reference fingerprints of matching reference multimedia content stored in the fingerprint database, a tag service to generate a tag representing the snippet of multimedia content, wherein the tag, the timestamp, meta information associated with the matching reference multimedia content, and a monitored variable for a number of viewers of the snippet of multimedia content are stored in a database storage as a tagged snippet of multimedia content, and to add the tagged snippet of multimedia content to a playlist for an identified multimedia program if the number of viewers of the tagged snippet exceeds a threshold.

RELATED APPLICATION

This patent arises from a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 14/255,742, which was filed on Apr. 17, 2014, which claims thebenefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/813,305, which wasfiled on Apr. 18, 2013. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/255,742 andU.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/813,305 are herebyincorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/141,163 filed Jun. 18, 2008 entitled“Methods and Apparatus for Providing a Scalable Identification ofDigital Video Sequences”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/141,337filed on Jun. 18, 2008, “Methods and Apparatus for Multi-DimensionalContent Search and Video Identification”, U.S. patent application Ser.No. 12/491,896 filed Jun. 25, 2009 entitled “Digital VideoFingerprinting Based on Resultant Weighted Gradient OrientationComputation”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/612,729 filed Nov. 5,2009 entitled “Digital Video Content Fingerprinting Based on ScaleInvariant Interest Region Detection with an Array of AnisotropicFilters”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/772,566 filed May 3, 2010entitled “Media Fingerprinting and Identification System”, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 12/788,796 filed May 27, 2010 entitled “Multi-MediaContent Identification Using Multi-Level Content Signature Correlationand Fast Similarity Search”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/955,416filed Nov. 29, 2010 entitled “Digital Video Content Fingerprinting UsingImage Pixel Intensity and Color Information”, U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/076,628 filed Mar. 31, 2011 entitled “Scale/Affine InvariantInterest Region Detection with an Array of Anisotropic Filters for VideoFingerprinting”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/102,479 filed May6, 2011 entitled “A Scalable, Adaptable, and Manageable System forMultimedia Identification”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/276,110filed Oct. 18, 2011 entitled “Distributed and Tiered Architecture forContent Search and Content Monitoring”, U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/327,359 filed Dec. 15, 2011 entitled “TV Content Segmentation,Categorization and Identification and Time-Aligned Applications”, U.S.patent application Ser. No. 13/590,701 filed Aug. 21, 2012 entitled“Media Content Identification on Mobile Devices”, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/647,996 filed Oct. 9, 2012 entitled AudioContent Fingerprinting Based on Two-Dimensional Constant Q-FactorTransform Representation and Robust Audio Identification forTime-Aligned Applications”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/826,502filed Mar. 14, 2013 entitled “Method for Efficient Database Formationand Search on Media Devices Acting Synchronously with TelevisionProgramming”, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No.61/940,921 filed Feb. 18, 2014 entitled “A Method for Valuing andTargeting Advertising Using Media Content Recognition” have the sameassignee as the present application, are related applications, and arehereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present invention relates generally to tagging multimedia contentfor content recognition, efficient sharing, reduced storage, and thelike.

BACKGROUND

There are a myriad of currently available multimedia applicationsincluding DVR recording, cloud storage of content, foursquare checkinginto show information, and sharing applications, produced by companiessuch as facebook™, twitter™, instagram™, miso™, getglue, etc. Also,bookmark applications are well known, such as pinterest™, cloudbookmarks, and the like.

However, these applications have various shortcomings with respect tosharing thoughts and comments during the multimedia consumption. Forexample, consider the example of a user is reading a book. When the userwants to comment on a particular chapter or a particular paragraph, theuser may want to refer to a particular chapter or a paragraph on aspecific page. Thus, the user's comments are best understood whenassociated within a particular context. When other users see thesecomments, they may need to understand the context which can be found byreading nearby sentences or paragraphs and this presents a need forfurther information that would not normally be conveyed with sharedspecific comments. Using general social networking services, users canshare their thoughts, comments on a particular selection of multimediacontent.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A illustrates an exemplary system having various devices, such asa television (TV) device, a remote, and local storage.

FIG. 1B illustrates a second exemplary system depicting devices andconnections supporting TV content downloading, streaming, and onlinestorage.

FIG. 1C illustrates a high level view of various media devices withreference to a TV content source.

FIG. 1D illustrates use of tagging in association with automaticcharacter recognition (ACR) in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 1E illustrates a search and tag networking system in accordancewith the present invention.

FIG. 2A illustrates a remote tagging system for generation and use of atag with automatic recording of a TV clip, the TV clip length managed bystart and end tags, along with addition of audio/text/photo comments inaccordance with the present invention.

FIG. 2B illustrates a local tagging system for generation and use of atag with automatic recording of a TV clip, the TV clip length managed bystart and end tags, along with addition of audio/text/photo comments inaccordance with the present invention.

FIG. 2C illustrates a schematic description of a tag in accordance withthe present invention.

FIG. 2D illustrates a schematic description of a playlist in accordancewith the present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary display of tags, comments associatedwith thumbnails, and video snippets in accordance with the presentinvention.

FIG. 4A illustrates a tagging process at a user device that enablestagging a multimedia content at a specific time in accordance with thepresent invention.

FIG. 4B illustrates an automatic content recognition (ACR) search andsnippet generation process that operates at a search system to tagmultimedia content at a specific time and recording of a snippet at thetime in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 5A illustrates a first snippet generation process that generates asnippet from the original multimedia content in response to a request inaccordance with the present invention.

FIG. 5B illustrates a second snippet generation process that generates aplurality of snippets from the original multimedia content in accordancewith the present invention.

FIG. 6A illustrates a process that describes how a video snippet isedited in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 6B illustrates a first video snippet being edited in accordancewith the present invention.

FIG. 6C illustrates a second video snippet being edited in accordancewith the present invention.

FIG. 7 illustrates a process to access past tags and comments for amultimedia content in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 8 illustrates a process to share, edit, delete, categorizepreexisting tags, add comments to existing tags, add an existing tag toa new/existing playlist, filter tags, and take similar actions on all ora group of the filtered tags in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 9A illustrates a playlist process to manually create a new playlistor modify an old playlist consisting of stored tags in accordance withthe present invention.

FIG. 9B illustrates an automatic playlist process to automaticallycreate a new playlist from a specified multimedia program consisting ofstored tag data in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 9C illustrates a graph that displays the snippets for a selectedmultimedia program and a threshold, such as a specified number ofviewers, that is used to automatically select important snippets fromall displayed snippets in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 10 illustrates a process to automatically determine current popularcontent in accordance with the present invention.

The figures are not to scale. Instead, the thickness of the layers orregions may be enlarged in the drawings. In general, the same referencenumbers will be used throughout the drawing(s) and accompanying writtendescription to refer to the same or like parts.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

However, among several aspects of the present invention, this inventionrecognizes that with current social networking services, the sharing offurther context on specific comments is much more difficult thandesirable. For example, there is no easy way to for a user to indicatethat a particular user's comment refers to the time instance 20 minutesand 20 seconds after the start of a TV program. The process of obtaininga time instance is difficult because, unlike books where chapters andpages give easy reference to the context, multimedia content doesn'thave an analogous and easy method to mark a time instance of a context.Even if a device playing the multimedia content can capture a timeinstant of a multimedia event, the device may not be able to interpretthe captured data, may not be able to track the multimedia event, andmay not be able to include a captured time instant in the user'scomments. Also, an additional problem is the lack of tools available toother users in receiving and interpreting the time instance to aid inunderstanding the context of the comment. Usually, to access multimediacontent at a particular time, users need to search a multimedia databaseto find the desired content. After the content is found, users need toreview this content up to that time instance in order to understand acontext of a comment at a particular time instant. Such capabilityrequires the device to include one or more applications having a playmechanism, possibly a fast forward mechanism or a tool allowing the userto positioning the cursor at a time instant in a content data stream andview the content at the cursor's location. Developing an application orapplications that provide such capabilities is perceived as difficult toaccomplish, take much effort and time and thus not consideredcommercially viable. This need to remember watched multimedia contentfor future reference, share it effectively and efficiently among thefriends has presently not been met. Thus, there is a need for a methodto organize, efficiently store and access multimedia content, andassociate a user's comments to multimedia content that one views orhears.

In one or more of its several aspects, the present invention recognizesand addresses problems such as those described above. To such ends, anembodiment of the invention addresses a method to tag streamingmultimedia content at specific times. A segment of multimedia contenthaving a specified duration that was captured from streaming multimediacontent is fingerprinted, wherein the generated fingerprints includetimestamp information based on a current time of the captured segment ofmultimedia content. A user command to tag the captured segment ofmultimedia content is received.

A tag request is generated including the generated fingerprints, thetimestamp information, and meta information associated with thestreaming multimedia content. The requested tag is displayed with a taglabel to identify the streaming multimedia content the tag is associatedwith and a label to identify the user that initiated the requested tag.

Another embodiment of the invention addresses a method of editing asnippet of multimedia content. A snippet of streaming multimedia contentis accessed from a snippet database based on a displayed tag associatedwith the snippet. The snippet is displayed with an initial start pointand an initial stop point of the snippet indicated in a film strip ofthe streaming multimedia content. A preferred start point and apreferred stop point are identified to edit the snippet to a modifiedsnippet size and location in the streaming multimedia content. Themodified snippet is displayed for user review and acceptance.

A further embodiment of the invention addresses a method of generating aplaylist of highlights of a streaming multimedia content. A plurality ofsnippets is generated from the streaming multimedia content according toa specified duration. A playlist is created for the generated pluralityof snippets. The snippets in the playlist are reordered according to aselected playtime. Snippets from the ordered playlist that areoverlapping are processed to remove duplication of multimedia contentfrom the reordered playlist.

These and other features, aspects, techniques and advantages of thepresent invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from thefollowing detailed description, taken together with the accompanyingdrawings and claims.

The present invention will now be described more fully with reference tothe accompanying drawings, in which several embodiments of the inventionare shown. This invention may, however, be embodied in various forms andshould not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forthherein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosurewill be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of theinvention to those skilled in the art.

It will be appreciated that the present disclosure may be embodied asmethods, systems, or computer program products. Accordingly, the presentinventive concepts disclosed herein may take the form of a hardwareembodiment, a software embodiment or an embodiment combining softwareand hardware aspects. Furthermore, the present inventive conceptsdisclosed herein may take the form of a computer program product on acomputer readable storage medium having non-transitory computer usableprogram code embodied in the medium. Any suitable computer readablemedium may be utilized including hard disks, CD-ROMs, optical storagedevices, flash memories, or magnetic storage devices.

Computer program code or software programs that are operated upon or forcarrying out operations according to the teachings of the invention maybe written in a high level programming language such as C, C++, JAVA®,Smalltalk, JavaScript®, Visual Basic®, TSQL, Python, Ruby, Perl, use of.NET™ Framework, Visual Studio® or in various other programminglanguages. Software programs may also be written directly in a nativeassembler language for a target processor. A native assembler programuses instruction mnemonic representations of machine level binaryinstructions. Program code or computer readable medium as used hereinrefers to code whose format is understandable by a processor. Softwareembodiments of the disclosure do not depend upon their implementationwith a particular programming language.

The methods described in connection with the embodiments disclosedherein may be embodied directly in hardware, in a software moduleexecuted by a processor, or in a combination of the two. A softwaremodule may reside in RAM memory, flash memory, ROM memory, EPROM memory,EEPROM memory, registers, hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or anyother non-transitory form of storage medium known in the art. Acomputer-readable storage medium may be coupled to the processor throughlocal connections such that the processor can read information from, andwrite information to, the storage medium or through network connectionssuch that the processor can download information from or uploadinformation to the storage medium. In the alternative, the storagemedium may be integral to the processor.

The following nomenclature is used in describing the present invention.For example, multimedia content represents any video, audio oraudio-visual content. Multimedia content may also represent a series ofphotographs or pictures, a series of audio files, or other associateddata, such as 3D video content or 4D content in which sensory feedback,such as touch feedback sensations, are presented simultaneously withvisual and audio content. The terms signature and fingerprint bothdenote the same structure of a sequence of bits and may be usedinterchangeably. A fingerprint is generated to represent a unit ofmultimedia content using a fingerprinting method that operates on theunit of multimedia content.

This invention in one embodiment describes an application that addressesthe problem of specifying a time instant in played multimedia contentand provides a context around the played multimedia content. Theapplication provides an easy to use interface to specify time instants,and allows the user to focus on sharing his or her comments and thoughtsin context. Thus, the user's experience of the multimedia consumption isnot diluted, not interrupted, and made more useful than current systemswithout such capabilities.

This invention in another embodiment allows users to tag, comment,share, like, and discuss, particular moments of multimedia content.Multimedia can be TV shows, games, speech, conferences, online videos,radio channels, advertisements, promotional shows, promotional videos,music videos, songs, and the like video, audio, and combinations ofvideo and audio. People can view, review and create thumbnails, thumbclips, tags, comments, audio comments, other meta information, markersto share specific content with other users and groups of users. Usersare also able to view, review, and follow specific multimedia content,groups of multimedia content, and other users in real-time.

Multimedia fingerprinting technology has outgrown from a researchtechnology to a mainstream commercial technology in recent years. Thefingerprinting technology is based on feature extraction and thenconverting these features into digital signatures that can be stored ina database. Such features can then later be searched for variouspurposes such as to find contents having a particular features, or a setof features, or to find contents that are similar to query content. Ingeneral, an automatic content recognition (ACR) system is used in thefollowing way. A fingerprinting program analyzes reference multimediacontent and creates signatures for the content. A search system loadsthese signatures into its databases. Whenever a search needs to beperformed on another portion of multimedia content to check if it iscomparable to any of the stored contents in the database, thefingerprinting program generates query signatures by analyzing the querycontent. The generated signatures are then sent to the search systemwhich runs a search across the stored signatures. The matching contentis identified if a match is found. The whole operation can be automatedwithout user intervention and it can be done periodically.

Other types of applications that have gained immense popularity andadaptation among users are the chat-rooms, social networkingapplications and websites. These websites let the users share variousactivities among their friends, co-workers or groups of peers. Someapplications let users follow activities of other users via instantnotifications or via status updates. Such social networking features areused to share information, such as personal updates, interests, currentstatus, and the like. For example, a user might be watching a footballgame and would like to share their thoughts on the football game with agroup of friends. Social networking sites let him or her share theirthoughts on the website and then notify the group of friends about it.

Even though various avenues exist to share comments about real-timeevents, a live TV program, or any multimedia content on the socialnetworking site, it is necessary to use particular markers such ashashtags to associate these comments to a particular event. A hashtag,by itself, does not allow a user to specify a time instant in a TVprogram at which point the comment refers to. Hence, all theapplications cannot directly utilize richer metadata and relationshipsbetween comments, a program timeline, and the program details to delivera better experience to the users. Users cannot easily generate a list ofprograms, episodes, and scenes that they have liked in past. Even ifthey have commented on the program on social networking sites, theycannot easily assemble this information to generate a list of theprograms that they have commented on.

The current invention bridges this gap between automatic contentrecognition (ACR) and social networking. The techniques described hereinprovide users an ability to tag multimedia content that they arewatching and/or listening. A tag in this context can be applied in avariety of different contexts and ways. The tag can be a text comment,it can be an audio/video commentary, it can be a hashtag, it can be aplain label, or it can be just a marker in the program like a bookmarkin a book. A tag associates a digital entity, such as a text comment, oreven an audio/visual comment can be directly associated with aparticular moment in the TV program.

Consider the above mentioned scenario in which a user is following afootball game. Suppose the user likes a particular touchdown very much.At the time the touchdown is made, he makes a comment “#touchdown—what agreat run!”. Current mobile applications do not have any knowledge aboutthe event or time instance at which the user generated these comments.However, in accordance with the present invention, a mobile applicationis used to share the user's thoughts that runs an ACR algorithm on theuser's device in the background or runs ACR algorithm at the backendsearch system on behalf of the user's device. This inventive applicationthen sends the text comments to a tag service in a search system alongwith query fingerprints of a video snippet of specified duration, forexample—of thirty second duration, of the identified event, in this casea particular touchdown. The search system first runs a search usingthese query fingerprints. If the search system successfully finds amatch for the query fingerprints that specifies the match from 20:20 to20:30 in that game, a tag service then associates the user's comments atthe instance 20:20. The tag service also creates a video snippet, i.e. ashort video clip of the multimedia content, of the game event of aspecified duration, for example one minute, around that time instancefrom 19:50 to 20:50. The time instant 19:50 is selected that is half aminute before from the start of the ACR match at 20:20. Now, wheneverthe user shares his comments with his/her friends, the friends know theexact moment during the game this comments was made and they can alsowatch the snippet to understand the context of this comment.

Note that it is not necessary to have ACR capabilities to find a matchtime. The match time can be derived with other information that isavailable in a tagging system as described herein. For example, thedevice that sends a tag request to the tagging system, instead ofattaching fingerprint with the request, the device can send the time ofthe request, which generally is the current time, and programinformation that was being watched at the time of the request and thatis known to the tagging system. The program information may be availabledirectly to some devices such as a TV or a set top box receiving thebroadcast channel. In such a case, the device knows which program it istuned to so it can automatically include this information in the userrequest. If the device does not know which program is playing or wasplayed at the time of the user request, then such input can be soughtdirectly from the user. The search system then can then use thisinformation to know that the user initiated the tag information around20:20 into the program.

After the game, the user can review all of the comments that he or shehas made. All these comments can be arranged in a “playlist” with thename “xyz game”. In this case, all the video snippets can be reviewedconsecutively in the form of a personalized video highlight of thatgame. Suppose the user tags every touchdown during the game with acomment that contains words “#touchdown”, the tag service canautomatically create a playlist titled “xyz games: #touchdown” thatcontains all of the touchdowns of that game. Thus, by filtering theplaylist “xyz game” with the filter “#touchdown” on hashtags, a newplaylist having the touchdowns of the xyz games is automaticallygenerated by the tag service. Such filtering and editing operations canbe done later after the initial comments are made. Note that a user neednot watch a game while it is being played. The user can watch a recordedgame, using DVR, or streaming services, or a repeat telecast, forexample, and still can make use of the tagging services as describedherein. An ACR system provides one of the means to enable such function.If ACR is not available, then an application can still achieve the samebehavior, if the application can infer or otherwise deduce the instanceat which the comments are made. Such inferences and deductions arepossible if the application works in conjunction with streaming the TVcontent, or the application knows the TV channel or program the user iswatching and the current time.

An embodiment of this application advantageously utilizes ACR to log atime instance when the tagging is performed. The ACR application may beembedded in devices that a user is utilizing. ACR searches can be donein the user device or on a remote server. If the embedded ACR providestiming information, extended searches to a remote search database maynot be required, assuming sufficient metadata associated with a timingevent is available on the local user device. If the device itself runs alocal ACR, then along with the comments, the device can provide matchtiming information to a tag service also located on the device. In sucha case, the tag service does not need to run a search as it already hasthe search results. For example, a web-connected TV, a photo-framehanging on a wall, a handheld mobile phone, a handheld remote control, atablet, or any other device may embed an application having an ACRfunction, as described herein. A common requirement for all such devicesis that these devices be able to monitor TV or audio program by directaudio/visual (a/v) stream access or by indirect methods, such ascapturing ambient audio via a microphone. These devices are alsorequired to be able to communicate with a search system for handling ACRqueries.

A user's device is configured, by downloading and enabling anapplication for example, to fingerprint multimedia content that is beingcurrently played. For example, a connected TV fingerprints anaudio/video stream that is currently being played. In another example, ahandheld mobile device fingerprints audio by listening via its embeddedmicrophone. Whenever the user wants to add a tag at a particular time inthe multimedia content, the user initiates tagging by turning on a “tag”button, which may be a software enabled user interface (UI) button or areal hardware button on the user's device. As soon as the tagging isinitiated, the user device starts fingerprinting monitored content for aspecified time. While tagging is occurring, the user may enteradditional data such a comment text. Once enough fingerprints aregathered, as pre-specified by a timer duration for example, the userdevice makes a tag query with the ACR search system. The ACR searchsystem receives the tag query along with the gathered fingerprints andthe tag information. The ACR search system first runs a search query todetermine if there is a match to the content that user was consuming.Once the search system returns a match, the tag service then associatesthe user tag and related metadata, such as comment text, to the matchcontent at the match time. Multiple such tags can later be shared,arranged, viewed, and modified as specified by further capabilities ofthe application.

Using the functions mentioned above, the following can be achieved.Users can store and review multimedia content, such as TV shows thatthey had liked in past. By analyzing the user tags, the parts ofmultimedia content, such as a game, that are most interesting from auser perspective can be found. Also, user derived promotional clips canbe generated automatically by stitching together most comment spots inthe content. The user tags can be analyzed and recommendations made forwatching other multimedia content. Users can receive and watch snippetsof tagged contents, such as snippets of movie trailers, TV shows, andadvertisements, and if they like what is shown, they can be presentedwith an easy mechanism to download and if appropriate to purchase thefull multimedia content. Such tagging capability also enables users tomore easily purchase other related content and advertised products.Tagging, as described herein, also enables various data analytics suchas tracking user behavior, statistics of viewing habits and popularityand trends in multimedia consumption in a more contextually focused andad nuanced way.

FIG. 1A illustrates an exemplary system 100 employing illustrativedevices such as a television (TV) device 101, a remote 102, and localstorage 103. In one exemplary scenario, users receive the TV contentlinearly by interacting with the TV 101 using only a remote 102 as theway to change a TV program. However, with the introduction of DVRs,users could record TV shows on a local storage device 103 associatedwith the TV, such as a separate DVR box as shown in FIG. 1A. A user caninitiate recording of the TV program displayed on the TV and store itfor further viewing or reference. The TV program content can also bestored in the Internet 104 connected remote cloud storage 105 as shownin FIG. 1B instead of the local storage device 103 as shown in the FIG.1A.

FIG. 1C illustrates a high level view 140 of various media devices withreference to a TV content source. Many users engage with multipledevices such as the remote 102, phone 142, and a tablet/computer device141. This varied engagement has led to development of second screenexperiences and second screen applications. Many users of TV like toshare their TV watching experience with their friends over socialnetworks. The sharing with their friends can also happen across theInternet and through various second screen applications associated witheach user's device. However, in current second screen applications, theimportant aspect of timing information is missing. The timinginformation can be added by associating the time of a tag to real timeTV content currently being aired. However, this approach does not workwhen a user is watching non real time TV content—for example when theuser is watching DVR content, or is watching pre-recorded content, suchas a movie. For this application, there is generally no difference ifthe multimedia content is a live program, a repeat telecast, or recordedcontent played from the Internet or a DVD. With the present invention,an automatic content recognition (ACR) application may be advantageouslyconfigured to provide relevant timing information in such applications.In FIG. 1D, the tablet device 141 runs an ACR fingerprinting algorithmthrough which a tag service and ACR search algorithm can run locally onthe tablet and obtain timing information about content being watchedwhen a tag action is initiated.

FIG. 1E illustrates a search and tag networking system 140 in accordancewith the present invention. The search and tag networking system 140comprises a user device 142, a remote download and remote search serversystem 156, and a network, such as the Internet 154. The user device 142comprises a display 143, a microphone 144, a camera 145, and a programcontrol circuit 146. The program control circuit 146 comprises aprocessor complex 147 having one or more processors, a program memory148 comprising an instruction memory such as a random access memory(RAM), a flash RAM, and the like, a storage memory 149 comprising datastorage, such as a RAM, a flash RAM, disk storage, and the like, and anetwork interface 150. The computer program stored on program memory 148may be downloaded from a computer readable storage medium havingnon-transitory computer usable program code embodied in the medium. Theremote download and remote search server system 156 comprises one ormore download and remote search servers 158 and one or more databasesand associated storage units 160.

FIG. 2A illustrates a remote tagging system 200 for generation and useof a tag with automatic recording of a TV clip, the TV clip lengthmanaged by start and end tags, along with addition of audio/text/photocomments in accordance with the present invention. In this embodiment,the remote tagging system 200 comprises a TV 202, a user device 204,such as a tablet, and a search tag system 206 that operates remotelyfrom the user device 204. The search tag system 206 comprises a tagservice 208, an automatic content recognition (ACR) search service 210,a storage device 212, a snippet service 218, a television (TV) feed 214for receiving currently playing TV programs, a multimedia contentdatabase 215, and a live TV monitoring system 216. The storage device212 stores tags and associated content, playlists, information aboutusers and user groups while the multimedia content databases 215 storesthe raw multimedia content such as mpeg movies. Snippets that have beencreated by the snippet service 218 are also stored in the storage device212.

The remote tagging system 200 supports users watching multimediacontent, such as a program on a cable network on the user's TV 202. Theuser is also using his tablet device 204. The tablet device 204 hasinitiated an ACR application by which it is able to synchronize to thecontent that is being currently listened to and viewed. The tablet ACRapplication can be configured in multiple ways. For example, the tabletACR application can be configure to use the TV audio by receiving audioinput from the microphone on the tablet device 204. The tablet ACRapplication interfaces with the remote search tag system 206. The tabletACR application includes processing and storage requirements that may beconfigured to process the TV display on the user's TV 202 using thetablet's camera separately from the tablet's microphone or jointly withthe audio input from the microphone on the tablet 204. The tabletapplication can also be configured to use the user device's current timeinformation in case of a live TV program. When the user initiates a tagaction, as received at the tag service 208, the user initiated process,as described in more detail below, may provide media fingerprints, textcomment, audio comment, identify already stored specific tags, controlinformation such as the clip length for the tag, and sharing semanticsto be associated with this tag. Using the media fingerprints, the ACRsystem 210 recognizes the multimedia content and the time in the contentthe user is watching or listening. The ACR system 210 then passes thisinformation to the snippet service 218. The ACR system 210 stores thecontent and other meta information, such as content information,playlists, information about users and user groups associated with thetag, to the storage device 212 for the future reference. A snippet ofthe multimedia content that the user is tagging is also recorded andstored along with the tag in storage 212.

The access and processing of a snippet is achieved by a method describedbelow. The ACR system 210 can initiate generation of a snippet or thedevice can initiate generation of a tag. In this case, the tablet 204can initiate capture of a snippet. A live TV feed 214 can be monitoredon the backend in the snippet service 218 and snippets can be generatedfrom these feeds. For non-broadcast multimedia content, a separatemultimedia content database 215 that holds the non-broadcast multimediacontent can provide the non-broadcast multimedia content to the snippetservice 218 which then generates the snippets at user selected sectionsof the content. The length of the snippet and or the start and end timesof the snippets can be controlled by the user. Along with the snippet,other metadata information such as close caption text information aboutthe multimedia content is also generated in the snippet service 218. Thesnippet service 218 can generate a preview of the snippet along with thesnippet and the snippet service 218 can generate a thumbnail picture fora snippet. When a complete tag action is finished, the storage device212 would store relational information, such as user added comments andtags, a snippet of the multimedia content around the tag time, athumbnail of the snippet, user provided photo or photos, sharingsemantics, and meta-information about the content.

Note that all or some of the functions surrounded by the box 206 can bedone locally on a user's device. For example, the ACR search 210 can becarried out locally on the tablet device 204. FIG. 2B illustrates alocal tagging system 220 for generation and use of a tag with automaticrecording of a TV clip, the TV clip length managed by start and endtags, along with addition of audio, text, or photo comments inaccordance with the present invention. In this embodiment, the localtagging system 220 comprises a TV 202, a user device 204, such as atablet, and a search tag system 226 that operates locally on the userdevice 204. The search tag system 226 comprises a tag service 228, anautomatic content recognition (ACR) search service 230, a storage device232, a snippet service 238, a television (TV) feed 234 for receivingcurrently playing TV programs, a multimedia content database 235, and alive TV monitoring system 236. The storage device 232 stores tags andassociated meta information, such as content information, playlists,information about users and user groups while the multimedia contentdatabase 235 stores the raw multimedia content such as mpeg movies.Snippets that have been created by the snippet service 238 are alsostored in the storage device 232. In this system, the tags and snippetsare stored locally to be received locally as requested by the users.These tags can of course be shared with other users using networkconnectivity 205 and through defined APIs which can share differenttags, snippets and playlists with other such devices that run similarservices locally or with the remote system that runs these services asshown in FIG. 2A.

The system 220 supports users watching a multimedia content, such as aprogram on a cable network on the user's TV 202. The user is also usingthe tablet device 204. The tablet device 204 has initiated an ACRapplication by which it is able to synchronize to the content that isbeing currently listened to and viewed. The tablet ACR application canbe configured in multiple ways. For example, the tablet ACR applicationcan be configured to use the TV audio by receiving audio input from themicrophone on the tablet device 204. The tablet ACR applicationinterfaces with the remote search tag system 206. The tablet ACRapplication includes processing and storage requirements that may beconfigured to process the TV display on the user's TV 202 using thetablet's camera separately from the tablet's microphone or jointly withthe audio input from the microphone on the tablet 204. The tabletapplication can also be configured to use the user device's current timeinformation in case of a live TV program. When the user initiates a tagaction, as received at the tag service 228, the user may provide a textcomment, audio comment, identify already stored specific tags, controlinformation such as the clip length for the tag, and sharing semanticsassociated with this tag. The ACR system 230 recognizes the multimediacontent and the exact time in the content the user is watching orlistening. The ACR system 230 then passes this information to thesnippet service 238. The ACR system 230 stores the content and otherinformation associated with the tag to the storage device 232 for futurereference. A snippet of the multimedia content that the user is taggingis also potentially recorded and stored along with the tag in storage232.

Note that it is possible to construct various combinations of local andremote services. A common system configuration would be to have ACRsearch both at a local system, such as a user device, and at a remotesystem, having servers and extensive database storage capacity. If thelocal search cannot detect a match, then the local device sendsfingerprints to the remote system along with the other tag details usingremote network connectivity 205. The remote system then can run moreextensive searches to check for a match to queried content.

FIG. 2C illustrates a schematic description 240 of a tag in accordancewith the present invention. In the search tag systems 206 of FIG. 2A and226 of FIG. 2B, a tag is defined as described in FIG. 2C. A tag is asoftware defined entity that has multiple components. The tag has aunique identification (id) number 256 that defines it. The tag containsa name 242, for example “#touchdown—What a great run!” which may not beunique among all the tags. The tag contains details of the user whocreated it and sharing primitives 254 regarding sharing of this tag. Thesharing primitives may include a list of users, and groups who arespecifically allowed to view this tag, and other security and privacysettings such as whether a tag, comments, and associated metadata can beseen publicly. The tag contains the user comments 250 such as “What agreat run!” or other audio/video comments from the user. The tagcontains the metadata information 248 related to the content such as“the channel name, program name, the program details, close captiontext”. The timing information 244 is also stored along with otherinformation in the tag. Thus, continuing the football example, thetiming information 244 would be—time instant 20:20, snippet begin 19:50,snippet end—20:50. The hashtags 246 that the user might have added areparsed and stored separately. Along with this tag are the emoticons,ratings, like or dislike counters 252 that are dynamic depending on thefeedback from the other users. A tag may be created comprising bitfields of varying length for the components 242, 244, 246, 248, 250,252, and 254.

FIG. 2D illustrates a schematic description 260 of a playlist 276 inaccordance with the present invention. As shown in the FIG. 2D, theplaylist 276 is a sequence of tags having components similar to thecomponents of a tag. The playlist 276 is also defined using a name suchas “#touchdowns—xyz game” 262. The playlist 276 also has its own sharingprimitives 274, comments 270, metadata information 268, hashtags 266,and emoticons 272. Instead of the timing information of the tag, theplaylist 276 also contains an orderly list of tags 264 that constitutethe named playlist. When a playlist is played, the snippets from all theconstituting tags are played in the defined sequence. A playlist may becreated comprising bit fields of varying length for the components 262,264, 266, 268, 270, 272, and 274.

An ACR application can also be loaded and configured in the TV device,such as TV 203, or in a device that receives the video signal from cableor devices, such as a DVR box, a DVD player, a tablet, or a laptopcomputer, for example. In such cases, a tag request to the tag servicecan also be generated at these devices or the tag request can still beinitiated at the tablet device. The tags can also be initiated frommultiple devices.

Multiple users potentially can initiate tags at the same time. Ifsnippets are being generated for each tag, then these snippets can beshared and stored together to reduce the storage space. The sharing canbe done a number of different ways. For example, snippets having thesame start and end time, within a selected time tolerance, do not needto be stored separately with only one copy stored. For snippets havingsimilar start and end times, a new snippet with the smallest start timeand largest end time can be created. This snippet can then be storedinstead of all of the other snippets associated with this time period.Of course some rules need to be adhered to so that the resulting snippetis not too long. A third alternative is to store only longer snippetsand whenever a shorter snippet is needed, then an underlying softwareprogram modifies a longer snippet to serve the requested smallersnippet. In this case, the longer snippets subsume a shorter snippetutilizing additional metadata stored within the snippet. Continuing withour previous example, suppose another user also creates a tag for thetouchdown at 20:20 with a comment “What a great touchdown!”. Then thesnippet from 19:50 to 20:50 associated with tag need not be recreated,rather the previous snippet video can just be shared. Note that eventhough the snippets are same, the tag title, comments, hashtags,creating user details and sharing information of these tags would bedifferent.

The user can create sequences of such tags for the same or differentcontents at different times. FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary display 300of tags, comments associated with thumbnails, and video snippets inaccordance with the present invention. The example shows an exemplarydisplay 300 of the tags as seen by user John, identified by label 303.The display shows six tags 306, 309, 312, 315, 318, and 327 in use byJohn. These tags are from different channels, such as tags 306 and 315associated with a channel, such as ESPN, and tags 309 and 318 associatedwith another channel, such as CNN, programs, such as tag 321 associatedwith the program “Celebrity Chef”, and one tag 312 associated with amovie, “Terminator #2” are also illustrated. The first tag 306 is forthe broadcast channel ESPN and is associated with a football gamebetween Giants and Steelers that was played on Monday night Nov. 4,2013. John has commented that “#touchdown—great run!” initially, as seenin the text under the tag 306. However, there is an exchange of commentsfollowing John's initial comment from another user named abba whosecomment “poor defense!” is shown below and John's reply comment “yes,but its still a great run” is shown in response. User abba was able tosee this tag and all its associated comments because sharing primitivesassociated with John's comment were set to allow abba to see and makecomments that were shared.

A user's tags can be displayed in a list or matrix fashion with athumbnail, such as thumbnails 306, 309, 312, 315, 318, and 321, or auser provided photo for each tag. The user can play each snippet byclicking the thumbnail 324. Also, the user can play each snippetassociated with a thumbnail and can additionally edit the beginning andend of the snippet to adjust the length of the snippet. Also, a user canselect a section of the multimedia content in the middle and make asnippet which is not contiguous in the original content. The user canalso edit comments that he has made, and choose a thumbnail for thesnippet. Users can see the detailed meta-information 327, such as closecaption text, comments, channel name, program details. Tags containingthis information can be shared as per the rules the user or the tagservice 208 or 228 might have set. If these tags are viewable by anotheruser, then that user would be able to see those tags. Users can also usefiltering operations to select only the tags that they wish to see. Forexample, another user can choose to view tags from a particular programand only from a particular user. The filtering can be based on varioustag parameters, such as the channel name, program name, comment text,hashtags, user, and time during the program, time of the program, closecaption text as well as combinations of these tag parameters.

FIG. 4A illustrates a tagging process 400 at a user device that enablestagging multimedia content at a specific time in accordance with thepresent invention. At block 402, a user starts the tagging application.At block 404, different sub-processes of the tagging application arestarted to be run in parallel. For example, a fingerprinting sub-processassociated with block 406, a sub-process associated with block 409, anda sub-process associated with block 412 are started in parallel. Atblock 406, multimedia content is captured for the fingerprintingsub-process, as a first sub-process, is initiated for the captured mediacontent. At block 415, fingerprint content includes fingerprints whichare generated for the streaming media content received for a specifiedduration and includes timestamps of the captured media content. Also, atblock 415, fingerprints are generated for samples of streaming mediacontent done periodically according to properties set up in the taggingapplication. Meta information is also associated with the fingerprintedcaptured media content, the meta information stored with the fingerprintcontent. After generating fingerprints for a specified duration ofmultimedia content, the tagging process 400 proceeds back to block 406where a next portion of media content is received for fingerprinting.

At block 409, a user input process, as a second sub-process, isinitiated that waits for user input, such as a user request or commandto generate a tag for a captured segment of multimedia content or auser's generated comments or both. At block 417, whenever a tag/commentis requested as determined in block 409, the user specified tag and usergenerated comment and details, such as timestamps based on current time,generated from the fingerprinting sub-process at block 415, and othermetadata, such as sharing primitives, and if known, the currentmultimedia details such as channel name and program name associated withthe user specified tag are bundled together to create a tag request. Atblock 418, this tag request is sent to the tag service, such as tagservice 208 of FIG. 2A or tag service 228 of FIG. 2B, along with thefingerprints from block 415 for a specified duration. After sending theuser tag to a tag service, the tagging process 400 waits for a responsefrom the tag service at block 419. If the response is positive and a tagis created then at block 427 the tag is displayed to the user and theprocess 400 proceeds to block 409 to receive a next user specified tag,comments, or both. If the response is negative at block 419, then theprocess 400 checks if more fingerprints are requested at block 430. Theresponse at block 419 may be negative because the search system may notbe able to find a match due to fingerprints being corrupted because theyhave been affected by noise or by the distorted content. Also, theresponse may be negative because the search system might not have thecontent the user is watching in its database. If the response at block419 is positive, then the process 400 requests more fingerprints atblock 433, proceeds back to block 419, stores the requested additionalfingerprints with the requested tag, and waits for the response from thetag service at block 419. At block 419, with the additionalfingerprints, a positive tag created indication is generally providedand the process 400 proceeds to block 427 to display the tag. Returningto block 430, if more fingerprints are not requested then the process400 proceeds to block 436 where an indication is displayed that a tagrequest process 400 could not generate a tag. Then, the process 400proceeds to the waiting state at block 409, waiting for user inputrequest for a new tag.

At block 412, a closing process, as a third sub-process, is initiatedwhich waits for user input to close the tagging process 400. At block421, whenever the user requests to close the application, theapplication closes the first sub-process 406 and 415 and closes thesecond sub-process 409 and 418. At block 424, after all sub-processesare closed, the tagging process ends which closes the taggingapplication.

FIG. 4B illustrates an ACR search and snippet generation process 440that operates at a search system to tag multimedia content at specifictime and recording of a snippet at the time in accordance with thepresent invention. The search system may be located on the user device,such as on a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop computer, a desktopcomputer, and the like. At block 443, the ACR search and snippetgeneration process 440 is initiated and waits for a tagging request fromthe user. At block 445, the tag request generated at block 418 of FIG.4A including fingerprints, a tag, and any comment are received by theremote tag service, for example, in a website providing the associatedsearch services. At block 446, using a fingerprint database that storesfingerprints for original content accessible at block 447, a search iscarried out at the ACR search system, such as ACR search system 210 ofFIG. 2A. At block 448 a determination is made whether a match is found.If a match is found, the process 440 proceeds to block 455. At block455, a new tag is created and is associated with the metadata and othermatch information accessed from the matching item. At block 458, thetag, associated metadata, match information, and fingerprints are storedin the tag and metadata store. At block 463, a snippet as requested bythe user, is generated by snippet generation services, such as snippetservice 221 of FIG. 2A. It is noted that at block 406, the multimediacontent is captured for fingerprinting only. For example, on the user'sdevice audio may be captured and fingerprinted without providing searchand snippet generation on the user's device. At block 463, which may beon a server side to provide an expansive database support, the snippetis generated and returned to the user's device for displaying to user.At block 465, the process 440 ends after the snippet is generated andstored in the snippet storage accessed at block 464.

Returning to block 448, if a match was not found, the process 440proceeds to block 452. At block 452, a determination is made whethersufficient fingerprints have been processed. If additional fingerprintscan still be processed, the process 440 proceeds to block 445 where theadditional fingerprints are requested from the client device so that anACR search can be performed with more fingerprints. Block 452corresponds to block 430 of FIG. 4A. At block 452, if no additionalfingerprints are to be requested, such as may happen if the searchoperation of block 446 has been executed unsuccessfully for at least apre-specified number of times, then the process 440 proceeds to block461. At block 461, the ACR search and snippet generation process 440sends a failure response to the user. Reaching block 461 can happen dueto various reasons, such as having fingerprints that are corrupted byambient noise in case of audio fingerprints, or reaching block 461 mayhappen because the TV program the user is watching may not be monitoredby the ACR system. The failure response from block 461 is sent to thetag created block 436 of FIG. 4A indicating that tag creation failed.There are currently thousands of channels and such search services asdescribed herein may only be authorized for selected channels, ifdesired.

FIG. 5A illustrates a first snippet generation process 500 thatgenerates a snippet from the original multimedia content in response toa request in accordance with the present invention. At block 503, thefirst snippet generation process 500 is started. At block 506, a snippetgeneration request is received that includes a match start and an endtime, thereby providing a specified duration. At block 509, the snippetgeneration system, such as snippet service 221 of FIG. 2A, processesreceived multimedia content or received live TV channel program contentand creates a small video clip of the specified duration around thematch period, such as generated at block 455 of FIG. 4B. The generatedsnippet is stored for efficient access at block 464 of FIG. 4B. In theprevious example, the match time was 20:20 to 20:30 and the snippetgeneration service selected a window of 19:50 to 20:50 to generate thesnippet. At block 512, a thumbnail is generated for the snippet. Thegenerated thumbnail is a selected image frame from the snippet andstored with the thumbnail is a closed caption text and other programdata. At block 514, the first snippet generation process 500 is ended.

FIG. 5B illustrates a second snippet generation process 530 thatgenerates a plurality of snippets from the original multimedia contentaccordance with the present invention. By generating snippets in acontinuous manner as described herein, two problems may be solved. Formany TV programs, some aspects of a TV program gather more attentionfrom the user audience. Such moments in a TV program receive morecomments and many users simultaneously may tag and generate snippetrequests for the same moments in the TV program. In such a scenario, theprocessing of tags and snippets requests would be computationally costlyfor a remote search and tag system to process and generate the same orsimilar snippets for all requesting users. Hence, by generating periodicsnippets in an automatic and continuous manner as described herein andassociating those periodic snippets with the user snippet requestsaccording to closest match times, the processing becomes lesscomputationally expensive. A similar process may be used on a localsearch and tag system on a user device to capture snippets in a firstphase while a user may not be present and then associate the periodicsnippets with user snippet requests generated at a later point in timewhen then user returns. A second benefit of generating such periodicsnippets is that these periodic snippets may be shared across multiplecomments from multiple users, for example, at time instances that areclose enough to a requested time period. Thus, the storage requirementfor snippets becomes more deterministic and more independent of thetotal number of the tag requests that might be received by the tagservice.

At FIG. 5B block 533, the second snippet generation process 530 starts.At block 536, a live TV feed or recorded multimedia content ismonitored. At block 539, the second snippet generation process 530 waitsfor a specified start time. At block 542, a video snippet of a specifiedduration is generated, such as 60 seconds for the previously describedexample. At block 545, a video thumbnail is generated that includesclose caption data and other metadata. At block 548, a determination ismade whether the TV live feed or recorded multimedia content has ended.If the program end has been reached as determined at block 548, theprocess 530 ends snippet generation operations at block 550. If theprogram end has not been reached, as determined at block 548, theprocess 530 proceeds to block 539 to wait for a next start period torecord another snippet of specified duration. Following the secondsnippet generation process 530, a plurality of snippets can be createdhaving pre-specified durations, such as {0 . . . 60 sec, 60 . . . 120sec, 120 . . . 180 sec}, {20 . . . 60 sec, 80 . . . 120 sec, 140 . . .180 sec} and the like. A single thumbnail is generated representing theplurality of snippets. Alternatively, a single thumbnail may begenerated for each snippet of the plurality of snippets. It may beappropriate to associate each snippet with its own thumbnail since othermetadata content, such as start and end time of the snippet, may beuseful in providing the user with additional viewing capability.

FIG. 6A illustrates a process 600 that describes how a video snippet maybe suitably edited by a user in accordance with the present invention.As described in the ACR search and snippet generation process 440 ofFIG. 4B, the snippet generation system creates a video snippetautomatically when a snippet generation request is received from theuser device. At block 603, the process 600 is started. At block 606, therequested snippet, for example one of the periodic snippetsautomatically generated by the search and tag system, is displayed onthe user device, such as the user's tablet. The snippet is displayed ina manner similar to that shown in FIGS. 6B and 6C. Usually a thumbnailis displayed in place of the corresponding snippet video. The user canedit snippets by a number of editing methods, two editing methods aredescribed herein with reference to FIG. 6B and FIG. 6C.

A first video snippet editing method 630 is illustrated in FIG. 6B withan exemplary initial snippet 632. A second editing method 650 isillustrated in FIG. 6C with an exemplary initial snippet 654 having afixed user defined length. In the first method 630 shown in FIG. 6B, theuser can adjust the position of both the start point and end point of aninitial snippet 632, allowing the length of the snippet to varydepending on the user's choice. With the initial snippet 632 on display,the user grabs the initial snippet start point 633 and moves it to adesired and final snippet start point 637. The user also grabs theinitial snippet end point 634 and drags it to a desired and finalsnippet end point 638. The final snippet 636 has a user defined length.

In a second video snippet editing method 650 shown in FIG. 6C, the userchooses the length of the snippet 652 and then grabs the snippet in thefirst position 654 and moves it to a second position 655. Under anassumption that the second position 655 is not satisfactory, the usergrabs the snippet from the second position 655 and moves it to a thirdposition 656. Assuming the user is still not satisfied with the snippetat the third position 656, the user grabs the snippet from the thirdposition 656 and moves it to a final position 658. Once the length ofthe snippet is fixed, a user just moves the window left or right so thatthe part of the clip that one wants is covered. Depending on animplementation, a user can grab a snippet at the snippet center point653, or at an end point or at any visible location within the snippet tobe moved.

Returning to FIG. 6A at block 609, the first editing process 630 enablesthe user to select the initial snippet start point 633 of the displayedinitial snippet 632 and move the initial snippet start point 633 to thefinal snippet start point 637. At block 612, the user selects theinitial snippet end point 634 of the displayed snippet and moves theinitial snippet end point 634 to the final snippet end point 638. Atblock 615, the desired final snippet 636 is displayed on the user'sdevice. The user device may also play the full snippet to determinewhether it is acceptable. In another embodiment, the user would be shownthumbnail previews of the beginning or end of the snippet as the userdrags the start and end marks to provide feedback concerning start andend point selection. Dragging may be provided by a user using a mouse orby touch feedback, for example. At block 618, if the user is satisfiedwith the edited snippet, the snippet editing process ends, such asstopping the first editing process 630 or stopping the second editingprocess 650. If the user is not satisfied with the edited snippet, themodifying process 600 can be restarted at block 603.

FIG. 7 illustrates a process 700 to access past tags and comments formultimedia content in accordance with the present invention. At block703, the process 700 starts. At block 706, a query requests details,including filtering parameters, by displaying the request for such dataon the user device. At block 709, the query request is generated basedon the details entered by the user, to search for a tag, comments, andother details of multimedia content around a specified time interval. Atblock 712, the query request is searched in the database and on a match,at block 715, the results are returned to the user device. These tagsare then displayed on a display, such as display 143 of FIG. 1E, and asdescribed in connection with FIG. 3 display 300. Some of the tags may beeditable by the user who is viewing these tags. If the user selectedsome tags to be edited then as shown in FIG. 8 process 800 these tagsare altered. If the user does not select a tag or tags to be edited, theprocess 700 ends at block 718.

FIG. 8 illustrates a process 800 to share, edit, delete, categorizepreexisting tags, add comments to existing tags, add an existing tag toa new or existing playlist, filter tags, and take similar actions on allor a group of the filtered tags in accordance with the presentinvention. At block 803, the process 800 starts. At block 806, a requestto manipulate a particular tag is received. At block 809, adetermination is made regarding the type of request and based on thetype of request, appropriate action is taken by selecting theappropriate sub-process. At block 812, a share a tag sub-process isstarted. At block 830, the tag, comments, and other metadata are sharedwith specified users and user groups. Also, sharing properties, such asspecifying users in user groups, and the like may be changed at block830. At block 815, a review, edit, delete tag sub-process is started. Atblock 833, the tag is displayed for review, editing, deletion, andupdate. At block 833, a tag may be deleted or the comment and hashtagsassociated with the tags may be modified and then the correspondingchanges are made in the database storage. At block 818, an add a commentsub-process is started. For example, at block 836 if another user has acomment on a tag that the present user likes, the new comments may beadded on the tag. In the examplary display 300 of FIG. 3, the user Johnhas created the tag 306 with a comment “#touchdown—great run!”. This tag306 was shared with user abba. When user abba saw this tag 306, abbaadded a comment to this tag using the workflow process 800. This addedcomment is shown as “poor defense!” in FIG. 3.

At block 821, an add tag to a playlist sub-process is started. At block839, a request to add a tag to a playlist is received and processed andthen the tag is added to the playlist and if necessary a new playlistmay be created. At block 824, a categorize tag sub-process is started.At block 842, all or a selected group of tags are categorized and a newtag may be added to a specified category. Also, at block 842, additionalhashtags may be added. At block 827, a filter tag sub-process isstarted. At block 845, information associated with the tag is retrievedand then appropriate filters are created based on the retrievedinformation in order to more efficiently access tags in the database.For example, if a request, for example by the filter sub-process atblock 827, is received to show tags that are similar to submitted tags,then corresponding filtering iterations are done at block 845 and newtags are displayed at the user device. For example, if the comment is“What a great touchdown” and a user requests to show tags that aresimilar to this comment, then the comment database can be searched tofind comments that contain words “great touchdown”. The search resultsthen can be ranked by the same game, team or teams of the games, playersin the games, the year of the game, the user who has created this tagand the like.

FIG. 9A illustrates a playlist process 900 to manually create a newplaylist or modify an old playlist consisting of stored tags inaccordance with the present invention. At block 903, the playlistprocess 900 is started. At block 906, the playlist process 900 waitsuntil a new request to add a particular tag and associated snippet to aplaylist is received. At block 909, the requested tag and associatedsnippet is added to the set of the tags and snippets the playlist holds.At block 912, if the playlist contains tags from a same program thenthey may need to be reordered at block 912 so that the tags in theplaylist are played in order of their start times. At block 915, sometags have snippets which are checked if they are overlapping. Ifsnippets are found to be overlapping, then these snippets arereprocessed to create joint snippets at block 915 so that when thesnippets are played no content is duplicated. Tags that are not from thesame program are not reordered and left in the order they were received.Also, user may reorder the tags at block 918 in a playlist as the usersare allowed to edit the playing order of the snippets. At block 921, theplaylist process 900 ends.

Instead of manually generating a playlist, the snippet generation systemcan automatically generate a playlist for a given multimedia program.FIG. 9B illustrates an automatic playlist process 930 to automaticallycreate a new playlist from a specified multimedia program consisting ofstored tag data in accordance with the present invention. At block 933,the automatic playlist process 930 is started. At block 936, using thefiltering ability, the snippets from the desired program are selected.Also, at block 936, these snippets are then ordered by utilizing adesired metric. For example, a simple metric to be used might be numberof viewers who have seen that snippet. At block 939, the top N of thesesnippets are selected to be included in a playlist that is automaticallygenerated for this content. At block 942, once the snippets that are tobe included into the playlist are finalized, those snippets are orderedby their start times. At block 945, if some snippets are overlapping,then those are combined to form a bigger snippet to remove the duplicatecontent. At block 945, this playlist is then stored in the storage.

FIG. 9C illustrates a graph 960 that displays the snippets for aselected multimedia program and a threshold 962, such as a specifiednumber of viewers. In accordance with the present invention, thatthreshold 962 is used to automatically select important snippets forwhich the number of viewers exceeded the threshold from all displayedsnippets. The threshold 962 can be a fixed threshold or a dynamicthreshold. A fixed threshold is a threshold which does not changedepending on the program, program details, and time, for example. Thus,a fixed threshold does not change as the number of viewers change duringrepeated playing of the streaming multimedia content. A dynamicthreshold is a threshold that may be different for each programdepending on program parameters. Two examples of threshold selection areoutlined. A fixed threshold can be simply a predetermined number ofusers. For example, the tagging system can set a rule that multimediacontent is considered important wherever the total number of usersis >2000. A dynamic threshold can be set up as a percentage of amonitored variable, such as number of viewers. For example, if themaximum number of viewers for the particular show was 10,000, then thetagging system can set a rule that the multimedia content is consideredimportant if the number of viewers is greater than 50% of the maximumnumber of viewers. Thus, whenever the number of viewers goes beyond5,000 that multimedia content can be classified as important. In anotherexample of a dynamic threshold, a plurality of snippets may be selectedthat represents the top N snippets that were viewed by a plurality ofviewers, wherein the number N may be changed according to a differentvariable, such as having a different N for different days of the weekwhen the media content may be replayed. The fixed threshold rule statedin the first example can be applied as the program is being streamedlive. However, because the maximum number of users cannot be determinedbefore the program ends, the second threshold which is a dynamicthreshold can only be applied retroactively after the program has endedon replays of the program. Other dynamic thresholds can be used in realtime. For example, a dynamic threshold may be adjusted according to anumber of viewers determined at the current sampling time or determinedat preset times during the multimedia program, which number of viewersmay increase or decrease as the multimedia program plays.

FIG. 10 illustrates a process 1000 to automatically determine currentpopular content in accordance with the present invention. At block 1004,a determination is made whether a list of popular content needs toupdated. If the list of popular content does not need to be updated, theprocess 1000 proceeds to block 1015 and ends. If the list of popularcontent does need to be updated, the process 1000 proceeds to block1006. At block 1006, various summarization parameters are generated formultimedia content to update the list since the last generation of suchresults. For example, a total number of tags for different contents, atotal number of comments for different contents, and a total number ofviewers following different contents may be generated in a listing formultimedia content from stored statistics. At block 1009, the list ofthe multimedia contents is sorted by a chosen parameter and the top Ncontents are chosen as the most popular content. At block 1012, theprocess 1000 pauses, also referred to as sleeps, for a specifiedduration after which the process 1000 returns to block 1006.Alternatively, the after the specified duration has passed, the process1000 may return to block 1002 in situations where popular content is notautomatically updated.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate from the present disclosureadditional, alternative system and method to associated multimedia tagswith user comments and user selected multimedia snippets for efficientstorage and sharing of tagged items between users, based on televisionprogram audio and video content fingerprinting, in accordance with thedisclosed principles of the present invention. Thus, while particularembodiments and applications of the present invention have beenillustrated and described, it is to be understood that the invention isnot limited to the precise construction and components disclosed hereinand that various modifications, changes and variations which will beapparent to those of ordinary skill in the art may be made in thearrangement, operation and details of the method and apparatus of thepresent invention disclosed herein without departing from the spirit andscope of the invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. An apparatus to add a tagged snippet ofmultimedia content to a playlist, the apparatus comprising: an automaticcontent recognition search service to search a fingerprint database tofind a match between query fingerprints for a snippet of originalmultimedia content captured from a multimedia program at a timestamp andreference fingerprints of matching reference multimedia content storedin the fingerprint database; a tag service to: generate a tagrepresenting the snippet of multimedia content, wherein the tag, thetimestamp, meta information associated with the matching referencemultimedia content, and a monitored variable for a number of viewers ofthe snippet of multimedia content are stored in a database storage as atagged snippet of multimedia content; and add the tagged snippet ofmultimedia content to a playlist for an identified multimedia program ifthe number of viewers of the tagged snippet exceeds a threshold.
 2. Theapparatus of claim 1, wherein the tag service generates additional queryfingerprints to improve identification of the snippet of originalmultimedia content, and supplies the generated additional queryfingerprints to be stored with the tag.
 3. The apparatus of claim 1,further comprising: an automatic content recognition system to: run anautomatic content recognition process to search for a match between thequery fingerprints and the original fingerprints stored in thefingerprint database; and retrieve the meta information associated withthe original multimedia content.
 4. The apparatus of claim 3, whereinthe automatic content recognition system associates a current time withthe identified multimedia program that is known to be playing at thecurrent time and at a channel selected by a user, wherein the originalmultimedia content found in the database is identified in the metainformation that includes scheduled playing time and channel.
 5. Theapparatus of claim 1, further comprising: a snippet service to generatea snippet with an associated tag representing the original multimediacontent provided by an automatic content recognition analysis in asearch system; and a storage database to store the generated snippet. 6.The apparatus of claim 5, further comprising: a user device to: accessthe snippet from the storage database; and display a plurality ofplaylists including a playlist of one tag representing the accessedsnippet, wherein a user selects the playlist of the one tag to initiateplaying of the accessed snippet.
 7. The apparatus of claim 1, furthercomprising: a storage database to store a plurality of snippets from theidentified multimedia program according to a specified duration, whereineach snippet from the identified multimedia program is a selectivelycaptured snippet of multimedia content having an associated tag; and auser device to display a playlist of tags representing a sequence ofselectively captured segments of multimedia content corresponding to asequence of snippets, wherein a user selects the playlist to initiateplaying of the sequence of the selectively captured snippets.
 8. Theapparatus of claim 1, wherein the tag service shares the tag with usersin a user group specified in sharing primitives stored with the tag. 9.A tangible computer readable storage medium comprising instructionsthat, when executed, cause a machine to at least: search a fingerprintdatabase to find a match between query fingerprints for a snippet oforiginal multimedia content captured from a multimedia program at atimestamp and reference fingerprints of matching reference multimediacontent stored in the fingerprint database; generate a tag representingthe snippet of multimedia content, wherein the tag, the timestamp, metainformation associated with the matching reference multimedia content,and a monitored variable for a number of viewers of the snippet ofmultimedia content are stored in a database storage as a tagged snippetof multimedia content; and add the tagged snippet of multimedia contentto a playlist for an identified multimedia program if the number ofviewers of the tagged snippet exceeds a threshold.
 10. The storagemedium of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause themachine to generate additional query fingerprints to improveidentification of the snippet of original multimedia content, and supplythe generated additional query fingerprints to be stored with the tag.11. The storage medium of claim 9, wherein the instructions, whenexecuted, cause the machine to: run an automatic content recognitionprocess to search for a match between the query fingerprints and theoriginal fingerprints stored in the fingerprint database; and retrievethe meta information associated with the original multimedia content.12. The storage medium of claim 11, wherein the instructions, whenexecuted, cause the machine to associate a current time with theidentified multimedia program that is known to be playing at the currenttime and at a channel selected by a user, wherein the originalmultimedia content found in the database is identified in the metainformation that includes scheduled playing time and channel.
 13. Thestorage medium of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed,cause the machine to: generate a snippet with an associated tagrepresenting the original multimedia content provided by an automaticcontent recognition analysis in a search system; and store the generatedsnippet.
 14. The storage medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions,when executed, cause the machine to: access the snippet from the storagedatabase; and display a plurality of playlists including a playlist ofone tag representing the accessed snippet, wherein a user selects theplaylist of the one tag to initiate playing of the accessed snippet. 15.The storage medium of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed,cause the machine to: store a plurality of snippets from the identifiedmultimedia program according to a specified duration, wherein eachsnippet from the identified multimedia program is a selectively capturedsnippet of multimedia content having an associated tag; and display aplaylist of tags representing a sequence of selectively capturedsegments of multimedia content corresponding to a sequence of snippets,wherein a user selects the playlist to initiate playing of the sequenceof the selectively captured snippets.
 16. The storage medium of claim 9,wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the machine to share thetag with users in a user group specified in sharing primitives storedwith the tag.